When word came that President Obama was scheduled to appear at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial on May 27, fear crept in among Mr. Obama’s political critics that he was making another stop on his insufferable apology tour.

Decades of “funding reforms” have replaced local funding with state funding, and greater and greater federal regulation of local public schools has led to school consolidation and the loss of local control in anything but name.

The aftermath of the Cold War has seen the emergence of what Robert Kagan and William Kristol have called “benevolent global hegemony.” The leaders of both major U.S. political parties have asserted that America’s unchallengeable military might...